I am Not Okay
It had been about a year since the divorce. I was on my own, living in a space manifested in a journal entry one short year prior. I lived in the heart of Atlanta, in an iconic architectural building, with a tub that could rival any top hotel. On the outside, I looked good, but on the inside, I was far from it.
I could not shake the heavy weight of grief. Let’s call it what it was: depression. If it weren’t for Polar, my Great Pyrenees/Husky, I would have stayed in my glass menagerie day and night, watching life pass by, drinking wine, doing yoga, and calling it healing. It was far from it, but it was a first step. Looking back, who knew my dog was a co-conspirator with the Divine—to get me to feel, to cry unapologetically, to allow the emotion of pain and separation to course through my body.
Every morning, we walked about two to three miles down Peachtree, hanging a right on 10th Street with a short loop through Piedmont Park. One gloomy day, I just didn’t feel like the idyllic walk in the park. I needed Polar to pee, poop, and return with me to the glass cage. She refused. Uggh, this dog! I tugged at her, gritting my teeth, “Girl, if you don’t come on.” I felt too exposed—my chest was tight, my head dizzy, and everything seemed to be moving fast and slow at the same time. Polar turned and squinted her one blue eye at me. I relented like a child and continued the walk.
On the corner of 8th Street and Peachtree, with construction on my right, a QT store before me, and an unhoused woman to my left, I just froze.
People walking in the opposite direction didn’t stop their conversations; they walked around me without pause or frustration. It was as if I was frozen in another dimension. Then the deep piano chords dropped in my ear. I heard the raspy voice of the artist, H.E.R.
In her song, I’m Not OK, she sings about sickness in the stomach, sleeplessness, and moving in and out of the city. My head moved to the left ever so slightly as if I had just heard someone I knew. My eyebrows furrowed. She proceeded to tell me exactly how I was feeling, because clearly no one else on the street could see it.
The first tear arrived like a surprise, hot on my face. My emotions couldn’t catch up to what my body wanted to express.
My head nodded to the rhythm, and the rain fell on cue. I tried to wipe the first tear; my hands were too slow. The other tears followed like soldiers, ready for the battle of my soul. My composure was lost. My body shuddered, my nose reddened, my face swollen, and my mouth cotton-ball dry.
What the fuck is happening? I thought. I don’t cry. I tried to breathe and tell myself I was okay, but the chorus repeated in my ears: “I’m not okay.”
Polar sat and waited. She knew the assignment. Damn you, Polar. I needed to be outside. I needed to hear that song at that moment. I needed to unlock the decades’ worth of emotional manipulation incurred by everything around me—society, marriage, parents, friends. All of it came crashing at the same time.
I was everything I was supposed to be. I had the job, the house, the car, the post-divorce slim-thick body, and even this cute fluffy dog. I was the poster child of success, right? And then H.E.R. articulated the reality of my long-held thoughts: guilt, imbalance, holding on to things I didn’t need, and the truth that I had “been going through it.”
The rain fell heavier, my body frozen, but my head nodded as if acknowledging the lyrics being infused into my soul. My hands lay at my sides, the leash draped around my wrist. The rain provided shelter from the shame of my tears. I began to believe H.E.R. I wasn’t okay. I was feeling guilty and had zero balance, no matter how much yoga I did.
The song ended and the world came back into focus. My trembling hands put the song on repeat. I looked around, and not one person had stopped. I looked down at Polar. Her one blue and one brown eye gave me a look of satisfaction. As if led by the divine, she got up from her seated position and turned towards home.
The rain slowed, my breathing steadied, my head continued to nod. To this day, I do not recall the five-block walk home. I just remember being back in my apartment. Later that day, I had to walk Polar again. This time, she moved with more pep and less attitude. She must have felt good about her accomplishment. The concierge asked if I was okay. For the first time, I was honest. My somber, yet powerful reply: “No.” His baritone voice replied with an honesty I didn’t know could come from a stranger: “I promise it will get better, sis. You have everything in you.”
A moment of honesty unlocked humanity.
There are times when I wonder if we are not seen because we hide. We say we are okay when we clearly are not. We have rules like, “Thou shalt not cry at work!” and I appreciate why we have those rules, but they are killing us—and it’s not softly. We consume and paint as opposed to being in nature to feel and emote. Our inner world is being covered and decorated with the accessories of life. In the opening refrain of Cranes in the Sky, Solange tells us about trying to drink it away, smoke it away, dance it away, work it away, and spend it away.
Feeling felt like the first step to living. Before that fateful rainy day, I held on to my rules as opposed to holding on to my soul. The cry was a release—a literal soul cry.
In the weeks that followed, I rested. I slept between meetings, food lost all flavor, and the TV watched me. I stared out of the window as if watching a world I didn’t belong in. One morning, a few weeks later, I woke early before the sun graced us with its warmth, rolled out my mat, lit some incense, poured a coffee, and did my first self-directed yoga flow. I moved at the pace of my emotion. I sat in poses for longer than 30 seconds. While in child’s pose, a wave of emotion came, and I wept in the safety of my glass castle, under the cover of darkness, my soul laid bare, my fluffy companion snoring gently in the corner. This time, I did not reject what came out of me. I accepted the cleansing. I let myself feel all the feels.
I did not come off that mat feeling refreshed. I felt like shit. Eyes puffy, nose snotty, I bathed and prepared for a round of Webex meetings with folks around the globe. I wore no pants and denied colleagues my usual pleasantries. The remote version of me filled in to get the job done that paid for me and the fluffy one to live.
Many months went by until I ate solid food consistently. My daily walks increased in length, and Polar started being the one to pull me home instead of walking another block towards the park. I often stated walking saved me. When I think about it deeply, a divinely inspired ritual saved me. For those months when I had nothing to hold on to, I held onto a ritual that no human assigned. I did not read a book or ask a friend. As if a puppeteer held strings to my limbs, I just moved until it took hold.
I rose, moved slowly, and often without clothing. I lit incense and candles. I meditated and prayed. I journaled and completed many of my half-read books. I walked my dog. It was a literal rinse, wash, repeat, but it had substance. There was nothing rote about it. This is where my current morning ritual originated. I hold on to this ritual because I know it is not only what saved me but what keeps me. Anytime I feel out of sorts and misaligned, I return to my ritual, to my safe space, to my body.
My body is home.
Meditation is my space to listen and feel before I head into a world that wants me to move fast, ignore feelings, and deliver an output that makes money.
Five years later, I continue to saunter through my healing journey fully aware of the catalyst.
If you’ve gotten this far, this story has captured you in some way. My question to you is: Are you okay?